‘They Will Kill You’ Test Audiences Made Director Soften the Violence Against Zazie Beetz

 “They Will Kill You” co-writer/director Kirill Sokolov once rented an apartment in what he describes as a “strange building.”

“Mostly lonely old ladies lived there for some reason,” Sokolov said. He and his wife were the only couple in the building younger than 65. One day he discovered a hole behind the kitchen cabinet that led to another apartment unit. He and his wife started joking that they were in a building run by a bloodthirsty cult. One night, Sokolov imagined, the cult members would climb through the hole and sacrifice them to a Pagan god.

A few years ago, Sokolov re-watched Roman Polanski’s demonic masterpiece “Rosemary’s Baby.” “I was like, Wait a second. That looks familiar,” Sokolov said. He pitched it to Alex Litvak, who wrote “Predators” and “The Three Musketeers” and is one of the many credited writers on the upcoming “Masters of the Universe.” “That’s how the script appeared,” Sokolov said.

“They Will Kill You,” opening everywhere Friday from Warner Bros. Pictures, follows Zazie Beetz’s Asia Reaves, a ne’er-do-well and ex-con, who gets a job as a maid at the mysterious Virgil – a swanky metropolitan apartment building. Soon enough, we realize that she’s there to find and rescue her missing sister, Maria (played by Myha’la) and that the building is populated exclusively by immortal Satan-worshippers (among them: Heather Graham, Tom Felton and Patricia Arquette) who are looking to sacrifice Asia to appease their god (voiced by genre legend James Remar).

The movie is a crazy bouillabaisse of ideas and tones, anchored by Beetz’s deeply human performance as a woman willing to do anything to free her sister, and by the conviction of Sokolov, who throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. (It mostly all sticks.)

“It’s inspired by ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and the beginning of the movie follows the classic tropes of a female protagonist stepping into a dangerous place. What you expect from those type of movies that throughout the movie, she will tries to survive and she will get her empowerment in the end and hopefully survive,” said Sokolov. He and Litvak decided, Let’s play with the genre. Let’s try to surprise the audience and make it as twisty and as crazy as possible.

This led to a series of decisions – What if she was the most badass person in the room? What if they come after her and she just destroys them? “It immediately throws us from ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and classic horror territory to a ‘Kill Bill’ reality, an action samurai/anime kind of thing,” explained Sokolov. “But you can’t do a whole movie like that, it will be boring. We need another twist. And the next one turns everything upside now. Now we are in Sam Raimi reality. We have crawling eyeballs and all kinds of weird, funny, crazy, scary sh-t.”

To realize this ultra-heightened version of events, Sokolov employed a graphic style that is more akin to comic books than traditional movies, with the camera pulling back and the entire tableau realized like “panels.” (There’s a particular moment when Beetz is climbing an air shaft and it’s just the illuminated column of action, surrounded by black.)

Sokolov said that the movie is “very post-modern.” “It gives you a lot of freedom with the way you tell the story visually and through performance. And you can do really crazy things and can remind the audience that they are watching a movie, with these kinds of eccentric shots,” Sokolov said. “I was thinking, Can you make a movie that is brave and fearless and throws itself into such weird territories and not be locked in one box? I hope it worked out.”

Grounding the madness, though, is Beetz’s performance.

“When we wrote Asia, she required very specific qualities from an actress – the movie shifts tone constantly and I needed to find a person who would be able to give me really honest, dramatic moments and then be able to bring some comedy in and add irony to it and then go and whoop some asses and be fully believable that she can do that, and then go back and show some fragility,” said Sokolov. He had been a fan of hers from “Atlanta” and “Deadpool 2” and “Bullet Train” and when he met her he said that, “My imaginary character immediately got switched with her.” “I couldn’t imagine anyone else,” he added.

In fact, Beetz was so endearing that test audiences found it difficult to watch her go through such a gauntlet.

“She is so lovable that there were some scenes when she had a really hard time and the audience didn’t appreciate it. We tested it for a small group of people, and they were like, ‘No, you can’t do that to Zazie, it’s too much.’ We really had to dial down because they were upset that we were so brutal with her character,” said Sokolov.

“They Will Kill You” marks Sokolov’s first movie in the West and his first for a major studio. Luckily, he had help in the form of Andy and Barbara Muschietti, the brother-and-sister duo behind the “It” movies and “The Flash.” This is the first movie under their new, Skydance-backed banner, Nocturna.

“They are incredible producers, but also they’re filmmakers, and they know what it means to be inside of the process, be in the trenches, do the movie themselves. They know the challenges you face as a director and they gave me so much support and put so much belief in this movie, and they loved it,” Sokolov said. “I got the kind of the freedom I could dream about and we achieved everything we planned and we wanted to. This movie is fully my responsibility, because nobody limited me anywhere. I hope it will work out, because otherwise, Oh, my god.”

Sokolov said that he would quiz the Muschiettis on whether certain moments in the script were scary enough and ask them how they achieved shots he loved in the “It” movies. The Muschiettis were always willing to answer him and help make “They Will Kill You” even better. “It’s a very different way to make a movie in Hollywood and deal with the studio system. They helped me navigate this part of the process. I am really grateful,” Sokolov said.

As for what’s next, Sokolov said he has written a “sci-fi thriller with a strong John Carpenter vibe,” which he plans to direct next. He would also love to do something in the world of the video game Cyberpunk 2077. “It’s a such a rich world that absorbs all of [William] Gibson literature and [Neal] Stevenson and it’s a such a great thing to jump into and to live couple of years of your life. Just creating that world, that would be a dream project,” Sokolov said.

But “They Will Kill You” being a horror movie released in 2026, he has also thought about what a potential sequel could look like.

“It’s a whole universe, there are cults everywhere. There is a lot of things I need to tell,” Sokolov said.

When we suggested there could be other Virgil locations in other cities, Sokolov agreed.

“Like in ‘John Wick,’ The Continental. Absolutely,” Sokolov said with a wink. You could probably describe it as devilish.

“They Will Kill You” is in theaters Friday.

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